Noble causes do not make it easy to ask for blood.

Ask Alci and Fatima da Silva, who spent three twelve-hour days early in June at a table in front of the Chapel of the Good Shepherd, waiting for potential donors.

More than 100 people signed up.  Some were turned away due to health factors and some never showed up.  But 65 eventually donated a pint of blood each on Roosevelt Island Day, June 9.  "The blood drive was a great success.  We collected more than double the average of 30 pints at similar events," said Alci da Silva, the Executive Director of the Icla da Silva Foundation, based on Roosevelt Island.  The foundation was set up in memory of da Silva's daughter, Icla, who died of leukemia a decade ago.

A chemical engineer by profession, da Silva, a soft-spoken, dark-haired, middle-aged man, used to work as a manager at a sugar plant in his native Brazil in the '80s.  His work and family, comprising wife Fatima Maria and three children, Amitaf, Airam and Icla – named after their parents using their names spelled backward – formed the core of his existence.

A severe jolt came in 1989 when doctors announced that Icla, 11, had developed leukemia and would need a bone-marrow transplant.  Alci flew to New York with his sons, hoping one of them would have matching bone-marrow cells.

When no match was found either within the family or the registry of the National Marrow Donor Program, Icla's doctor at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Norman Wollner, asked Alci to find a donor on his own.  "I did not know where to begin," said daSilva.  "I was new to New York, had been asked to sustain my family here for a year and was unable to work legally.  I sold everything I had in Brazil, moved into a two-bedroom apartment in Manhattan Park and began contacting anyone who I thought might be of help – the Brazilian Consulate, churches, banks and volunteer organizations."

To support the family, da Silva delivered pizza, drove cars for seniors, and fixed computers picked out of the garbage.  "Fixing things became my therapy.  My sons and I would go through the garbage every day and bring back electronic goods that we fixed and sold," said da Silva.  Meanwhile, the family began organizing blood drives in churches in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts, hoping to find a match.  Icla was actively involved in the entire process, winning people over with her smile and courage.  In late 1990, a donor with a bone-marrow match was finally found.

The next hurdle was the $90,000 fee that Sloan-Kettering would charge for the surgery.  "In November 1990, several friends who lived on the Island, including Patricia Schwartzberg, Dr. Lawrence Itskowitch, Lou Carbonetti, and Ron Vass organized a fund-raiser under the name Love Thy Neighbor and helped collect half that amount," said da Silva.  Next, they spoke with the finance head of Sloan-Kettering and managed to procure a waiver for the rest.

Icla's operation was scheduled for May of 1991 but, a few days before the operation, she developed pneumonia, then died on June 21.  "We went back to Brazil to bury her and I came back alone to pack our things.  When I went through Icla's papers, I found a note addressed to her mother, asking Fatima not to lose heart and to help her friends at the hospital.  I thought about that and about this," said da Silva, pointing to a framed drawing of Jesus hanging on the wall in his office at Coler-Goldwater Memorial Hospital, which has lent him the space.  "Once when Icla was ill, she asked me who God was and I didn't have an answer that instant.  While she took a nap, I sat beside her and began to draw."

A devout Catholic, da Silva's background had given him the requisite training to answer the question at length and in his own special way.  He had studied at a seminary, and once thought he would become a priest, but gave up the thought when he turned 16 and found priests around him breaking the very rules they expected others to follow.  "I wanted to be a good man rather than a bad priest," said da Silva.

Over the penciled portrait, he wrote in red ink: "We don't see Him, we don't hear Him but we feel his presence in the strengths we have had to face the difficulties of life.  That does not make us suffer.  It improves our feelings toward our neighbor.  We see Him, we hear Him and we feel Him in our hearts."

These were not empty words.  The family had been helped by everyone in the community and they wanted to give something back.  Alci decided to stay on the Island and set up a foundation to help other families who had the same medical problems.  His wife and children came back to New York and moved into Eastwood, where they now live.  All four members of the family work for the foundation, raising money and organizing blood and bone-marrow drives.

"I helped Alci because I could tell he was a very dedicated person," said Dr. Itskowitch, a member of the Board of Directors of the foundation.  "He is very sincere with regard to helping other people."

Progress was slow but, with dollops of dedication, the foundation has grown and flourished in the past decade.  The foundation was the first organized group inspiring the New York Blood Center to develop recruitment activities in communities not reached before.   It also inspired creation of other such groups like the Link to Life Network for African-Americans, and SAMAR, the South Asian Marrow Association of Recruiters, for South Asians.

In its mission statement, the work of the foundation has been grouped under recruitment and assistance – recruitment of donors for the National Marrow Donor Program with special emphasis on recruiting people from ethnic groups that are under-represented in the national registry, and assistance to families with children who have leukemia or other blood-related diseases.

Its aims are to educate people about bone-marrow donation programs, set up blood-donation drives and provide logistical support to patients and their families.  Volunteers help patients and their families in simple but essential tasks like translation, chaperoning children for walks, travel and recreation.

"We organize about 100 blood-donation drives each year.  We recruit donors for the National Marrow Donor Program.  As of September 2000, we have recruited 3,735 donors.  We send supplies and equipment to Third-World countries, especially to South and Central America," said da Silva.  "Icla wanted to be the president of the foundation when she grew up."

For more information, call (212) 593-1807 or visit www.icla.org on the Internet.